While the United States presidency has existed since the days of knickers and powdered wigs, the exercise in public theater known as the presidential debate is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back just a half century.

The institution has predecessors, including intraparty debates between Republican presidential candidates Harold Stassen and Thomas Dewey in 1948, and Democrats Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson in 1956.

But the first general presidential debate didn't happen until 1960, when John Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off on television. It was the year a promising young boxer named Cassius Clay won an Olympic gold medal and "The Flintstones" debuted.

For many Americans, that first debate is within living memory. But while the Barack Obama-Mitt Romney showdown at the University of Denver is rooted in the Kennedy-Nixon debate, the rise of social media and the 24-hour news cycle has changed things. Today, gaffes and gotcha moments, such as Gerald Ford's infamous 1976 assertion that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination, go viral.

The history of presidential debates might be brief, but it is packed with memorable moments: zingers and flubs, triumphs and flops, and tons of backroom dish. Former president George H.W. Bush dubbed the experience "tension city."

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"There's almost a NASCAR mentality," said Dale Herbeck, who chairs the Communications Studies department at Northeastern University in Boston. "A lot of people watch the debates to see who's going to put their foot in it and have this massive flameout."

Kennedy-Nixon

The Kennedy-Nixon debate on Sept. 26, 1960, was the first of four meetings. It was televised, and the common memory is of a pale, sweating Nixon getting trounced by the tanned, charismatic Kennedy.

It was a bit more complicated than that. Nixon was under the weather, arriving at the Chicago studio the day of the debate after a frenetic state-to-state campaign hop. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower had told his vice president to avoid debating Sen. Kennedy, since it put him on a level playing field with his opponent.) Kennedy, fresh off a California swing, was in town a day earlier, where his staff scouted the studio and recommended he wear a dark suit to contrast with the painted set.

In fact, many people who heard the broadcast on the radio thought Nixon more than held his own.

"There is one story about a group of Southern governors convening in Arkansas who only had access to a radio," Herbeck said. "They thought Nixon clearly won. But when they saw the TV tape next day, they thought Kennedy won."

Scott Jensen, who directs the debate and forensics team at Webster University in Missouri, said Nixon would have fared well in a pre-TV era debate. "He was intelligent, had vision and was articulate," he said. "But his visage was made for radio."

The instant collective wisdom in 1960 was that Nixon was undone by television. Polls showed that more than half the voters based their decision on the debates.

Carter-Reagan

Candidates became so leery that the next presidential debate would not occur until 16 years later. Lyndon Johnson, who was far ahead in the polls, declined to debate Barry Goldwater in 1964. Nixon refused to debate Hubert Humphrey in 1968 or George McGovern in 1972.

Carter was boosted in 1976 by Ford's "no Soviet domination" gaffe, but endured the downside of televised debates in 1980.

Beset by a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis, Carter was finally persuaded by his aides to debate Ronald Reagan. (An earlier debate between Reagan and independent candidate John Anderson had gone off without Carter, who nixed a three-way format.) The defining moment: Carter making a detailed but rather droning point on health care, and then Reagan, with his Hollywood-honed affability, telling the audience that Carter had mischaracterized his Medicare aims with a shake of his head and "There you go again."

It was a verbal shiv to Carter's ribs, and about as deflating. Reagan won in a landslide. (Reagan would use the phrase in future debates, including one with Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential race.)

Dukakis-Bush

In 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis, who faced George H.W. Bush, was savaged after moderator Bernard Shaw asked him what his reaction would be if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered. Dukakis, who was anti-death penalty, was perceived as giving a dithering reply.

"It was actually more nuanced than that, but in such circumstances, audiences wanted to see more emotion, even if it was him blasting out with a 'How dare you ask that question!' " said Mitchell McKinney, professor of communication at the University of Missouri.

"I think we've learned that the 'aha' moments have become more important," Jensen said. "People look for the one thing that'll be in the paper the next day."

Or tweeted in the next 15 seconds.

McKinney sees the use of social media during debates as a positive.

"When people use social media, they follow more closely, engage with fellow citizens and are more engaged in the campaign," he said.

Others aren't so sure, worrying that the truncated format exacerbates sound-bite nation. Public appearances become minefields, with kablooie moments caught on film and made viral in seconds. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was derailed in an early GOP debate when he could not name the third of three agencies he had vowed to abolish.

Debate formats have changed enormously since one of the modern debate's antecedents, the seven 1858 meetings between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, who were vying for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. The format: One candidate got an hour to speak, his opponent followed with a 90-minute speech, then it was back to the first speaker for a 30-minute rejoinder.

And debate formats changed significantly since 1960, morphing from panels of journalists running the show to single moderators to town-hall formats where candidates field questions from the public.

Bush-Clinton

The first town-hall presidential debate came in 1992. Incumbent George H.W. Bush took the stage with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

"The contrast could not have been more stark," McKinney said. "Bill Clinton was saying, 'I feel your pain,' while Bush looked ill at ease and awkward in interaction. The camera caught Bush looking at his watch while the other candidates were speaking."

The debates were sponsored and run by the League of Women Voters from 1976 to 1984, who quit in protest of candidates and parties trying to dictate how the debates were formatted.

Running the debates was taken over by the Commission on Presidential Debates, headed by former chairs of the Republican and Democratic national committees.

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